4Ghz CPU Power - Overclocking the P4

We take a brand new Pentium 4 3ghz with a 800Mhz FSB, put it into the ASUS P4C800 and hook it all up to a Prometeia system. How does it perform in everyday applications? Find out in this article on future CPU power

Introduction

Overclocking the Pentium 4 3.0ghz 800FSB:

What do you do when you have the latest Hardware Gear at your disposal?... You overclock it of course!Combining an ASUS P4C800 with a P4 3ghz (800FSB) already deliveres quite impressive results, when we overclock it with the default heat sink you can easily reach 3.5ghz, slapping on a more expensive air-cooling solution (SLK900U or equal) takes it up to 3.6ghz!

Although having a workstation running 24/7 at 3.6Ghz can be called far from bad, it is in the nature of mankind to always try harder and go higher. That's why we hooked it up a Prometeia from Chip-Con to the CPU in an attempt to obtain very chilly temperatures.

With this added cooling power the P4 when straight over 4ghz using only a small voltage increase (1.65v vcore), while still remaining very cold indeed:

This is the CPU temp at IDLE in Windows XP, when we stress the system using a variety of benchmarks we can see it climb up to -15°C, and hovering around -20°C during normal CPU usage. Having a good insulation around the CPU socket is essential with this setup!

We went from this:

To this in less then 2 hours (Installing the Prometeia's hose onto the CPU socket proved to be a real challenge with the ASUS P4C800 as there were some capacitors obstructing a perfect fit, after some wiggling and adjusting we got it installed):

How does a 4ghz CPU compare to its normal none-overclocked counterpart? Find out on the next page...